In the prior art, personalized printed matter is obtained through an extended process of back-and-forth between a printer and an end user. This process is even more extensive when dealing with a large company having several to many facilities. In such organizations, there is commonly an individual or department assigned with the responsibility of procuring personalized business stationery (letterheads, note pads, etc.), business cards, and other personalized printed business-related matter, such as identification badges, passes, vouchers, etc. With reference to FIG. 1, as shown in Box 1, an end user (such as a new employee) who desires a printed product (specified by way of non-limiting example as a business card) fills out a paper order form with required information, and the paper order form is transmitted to the procurement individual/department (referred to as “central office”) by facsimile, inter-office mail, etc., as represented by Box 2. The procurement individual/department reviews the paper order form to ensure its completeness, and forwards the form to a contracted printer.
With reference to Box 3, in a common prior art arrangement, the printer manually typesets the information on the forwarded form using a page layout program, such as the program sold under the mark “QuarkXPress” by Quark, Inc., and creates hard copy proofs of the desired printed matter. The proofs are then forwarded to the procurement individual/department (Box 4). The proofs may be reviewed by the procurement individual/department, but are also often forwarded to the end user for review. If any corrections are required, such as to correct misspellings, typographical errors, and the like, the proofs are annotated accordingly, and the annotated proofs are forwarded to the procurement individual/department to repeat the process of Boxes 2-5. The sub-process of Boxes 2-5 is continuously repeated until the proofs are correct and approved.
As noted at Box 6, once the proofs are approved, the procurement individual/department notifies the printer, or forwards a copy of the approved order. Since the corrections to the proofs must be made in the page layout program, the files stored in the program should contain correct information, upon approval of the proofs. Printing plates are generated from the page layout program using techniques known in the prior art (Box 7), and the desired printed matter is printed using the printing plates (Box 8). Finally, the printed matter is forwarded to the end user (Box 9), often through the procurement individual/department.
As is readily apparent, the prior art method has several shortcomings. For instance, the repetitive process necessary to correct errors in the proofs (sub-process represented by Boxes 2-5) is often time-consuming and may take several days to weeks. Generally, three weeks are required to perform the entire process of FIG. 1. Additionally, the process necessary to correct errors relies on manual input, which is not fully accurate. Thus, all requested corrections may not be entered into a proof, necessitating further corrections and generation of proofs.
Furthermore, consistency in printed matter throughout an organization may not be obtained. For example, a business card of a first employee of an organization may include the full spelling of “Street”, whereas, a second employee of the same organization may include the abbreviation “St.”. Organization-wide consistency is often preferred in personalized printed matter to provide a more professional image of the organization. These problems are exasperated where national franchises are involved and each individual franchisee of a national franchiser prints printed matter. Often, the national franchiser wants control over the presentation of business cards, letterheads, etc. to ensure a desired image of the company is being maintained.
It is an object of the subject application to provide a method for preparing printed matter which overcomes the shortcomings of the prior art.
It is also an object of the subject invention to provide a method for preparing printed matter that may be used over the Internet.